Novel Nonconforming Finite Element Methods for Maxwell's Equations

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The research in this project is based on the recent discovery of the PIs that numerical solutions of Maxwell's equations can be based on variational formulations that use function spaces where the divergence free condition is enforced. This is made possible by combining classical nonconforming finite elements for incompressible fluid flows and techniques from discontinuous Galerkin methods. In this new approach the boundary value problems of the time-harmonic (frequency-domain) Maxwell's equations are solved as elliptic problems, and the performance of the new nonconforming finite element methods for both the source (deterministic) problem and the eigenproblem (cavity resonance problem) is comparable to the performance of classical finite element methods for computational mechanics. In particular the discrete eigenvalues have neither spurious modes nor nonphysical zero eigenvalues. The proposed research will design and analyze many novel schemes for the Maxwell equations and the Maxwell eigenproblem using this new approach. Fast solvers (multigrid and domain decomposition methods) and adaptive algorithms will also be developed, with applications to related electromagnetic problems.The results of the proposed research will provide powerful computational tools for the design and analysis of electromagnetic devices such as antennas, radar sensors, waveguides, photonic crystals, magnetoresistive sensors and particle accelerators, with applications to diverse areas such as telecommunications, integrated optics, lasers, high energy physics, plasma physics, and nondestructive damage detection.